Amazon's Hit Man | Larry Kirshbaum was the ultimate book industry insider—until Amazon called

By pursuing authors directly, Amazon can cut out the middleman and pass on the savings to authors in the form of higher advances and royalties, and to readers in the form of lower book prices. Executives at the major publishing houses see all of this and conclude that Amazon aims to put them out of business.

In the middle of this stew of rancor and mistrust sits Kirshbaum. He was once the ultimate book industry insider, widely known and almost universally liked. He has a well-honed instinct for big, mass-culture books and was thinking about e-books—and losing money on them—long before almost anyone else in the industry. Many of his former peers now consider Kirshbaum a turncoat. In interviews, more than a dozen publishing executives said he had gone over to the dark side; some said they’d conveyed that sentiment to Kirshbaum directly. (None of the executives would speak on the record because Amazon is still a vitally important retail partner.) “I have a message I really believe in,” Kirshbaum says. “Which is that we’re trying to innovate in ways that can help everybody. We are trying to create a tide that will lift all boats.”

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/amazons-hit-man-01252012.html